The Story of Bitter Waters

Philip recalls:

I had been reading Moses Maimonides's On Women , a rollicking good read, all you might ever want to know about tum-tums.

And then, one night when I was supposed to be working, I got to reading the first couple chapters of Ulysses , and I thought, damn, that's good, but I haven't got the time to be reading this now. So I stopped.

My friend, Richard, well, his pretty Dominicana girlfriend from the Linguistics Department dumped him in a slow, spectacular, and egregiously cruel way. And gave him a copy of the Tao in the bargain. God, what an overweening bitch. But, I digress.

And a few days later, I got wicked bored in a Shakespeare lecture and wrote this on the way home on the bus. Words, words, words .

A year or so after that, Sean introduced me to Tommy, and Tommy said, Whattaya got? I said, I got this. And the song took place. Like, right then.

And we saw that it was good. Click on the button below and give it a listen.

You'll need a realplayer to hear Bitter Waters, and that can be easily had by clicking on the goldtoned icon below. It's free in the best sense of the word, downloads and installs on the fly (mostly), and will allow you to hear all manner of cool and interesting things.

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Bitter Waters

Tonight my love sleeps
In bitter waters
Her ways are widely known
It hardly matters
The flood which should rip
The flesh from her bones
Washes over her
And leaves her sins unshown

Once, rosepetals fell
Where her white feet trod
Once, the violets bloomed
Where she couched upon the sod
Now, it's all that I can do
To speak her name
Where nothing grows
But shattered glass and shame

Tonight, the starshine falls
Upon her chessmen
Her small hands feeling moves
She can not comprehend
That which was broken
When she lied
The year has turned
And she has turned aside

Once I though she shon forth
Like the royal barge on the Nile
Once I thought the sunrise
Dependant on her smile
Now, her darkling form
Stands sidewise to the moon
Her heart is pure
And full of dead men's bones

Tonight, while silence sleeps
Inside the garden
Her shape comes gliding
Seeking for no pardon
Her oaths are sworn
With clear eyes and with laughter
Such words she wrote with wind
On bitter waters

Once, the harpstrings sang
Touched by the April breeze
Now, the autumn gales
Howl through the barren trees
To love her as she is
And not as she was
To love her as she is
And not as she does